Ahhhh, I have been getting all sort of nostalgic lately! I was watching my two young cousins building a fort (Named their "Master of Piece" lol) in my backyard and it got me thinking!

What are your favorite childhood memories?

One of mine is playing with my next door neighbor Jason when I lived in Queens. One day we got a small bathroom garbage can and filled it with water and lots and lots of dirt to make mud. We were pretending to be Italian bakers who had to make Easter pies for everyone in NY. We made so many mud pies, put them in the oven (laid them out in the sun) to bake, and got SUPER messy! We got so messy that both our mothers had to hose us off before going back inside!

After we were all cleaned and our pies were baked we sat in the sun eating Mr. Softee ice cream cones with chocolate sprinkles and talked about getting our pie orders out to our customers.

My favorite childhood memories involve my brother getting hurt somehow.

1. We made a zip line from the top of our fort (a good 30 feet off the ground) to the bottom of a pine tree. We used a old lawn mower frame as the part to zip down from. I was not good at tying knots. As soon as my bro was about 5 inches from the top of the fort, it unraveled and he fell all 30 feet down! It was OK, we planned ahead and he wore a helmet! I ran down thinking MOM'S GONNA KILL ME, but he was just laying there stunned, saying, "I think I need to be on the floor for a while!"

2. My best friend and I were making a haunted house out of old cardboard boxes and almost empty cans of spray paint. Jer decided he wants to help, so he picks up a clogged red can. He tries to depress it but nothing's coming out. He said, "It's empty!" and looks straight at it and SPRAYS HIMSELF IN THE EYE! My best friend and I could not stop laughing, mom flushed his eyes out in the shower, all we can hear from him was, "I'M GOING TO GO BLIND!!!"

3. We're up in the fort again. My best friend, Jer, and I are setting fire to things in a metal canister cos fire is cool and we're bored. Mom comes out to see what we're doing, and we freak out! We told Jer to sit on the can to hide the smoke! And he did, and you can see the look of worry on his face from getting his shorts on fire!

4. The three of us are playing flashlight tag. My best friend is skinny as a pole, and good at hiding in dark places. Jer turns a corner and BOO! Jer starts crying to my dad, "DAAAAD!" Dad's like, "What???" cos he's watching TV. Jer cries, "Crystal scared me!" We laughed and laughed and I got stuck under a desk cos I was a fat girl.

5. Not involving Jer getting hurt, but I have a clear memory of visiting the London Bridge. The place is kinda hilly, and my dad started running down the hill to catch Jer and he couldn't stop running and rolled down the hill!!!

Haha oh man I was just thinking a bunch about this last night.

I remember a bunch of shit but right now my favorite memory is the first time I rode Space Mountain at Disney.

I must have been about 5 or 6, and it kind of became established that I was going to ride it. I don't remember if I decided that I wanted to, or if my dad was trying to convince me to. Either way, I had never gotten on a ride like that before, so I was pretty terrified. So right before we got on, my dad went over to get someone to do something for me so I would feel a bit better.

As the ride is going up and there's the crazy lights and sounds and my heart's up in my throat, someone says over the speaker, "Captain Vivian, we're ready for take-off."

I could have died right there. Talk about the place where dreams come true.

Oh gosh, this one is going to sound weird and gross, but it kind of shaped who I am as a person. As a little kid my dad was friends with the local taxidermist. His name was Bob White, like the quail! I have no idea who's idea it was to take a little girl to a taxidermist's shop, but it was probably my mom's because we're weird like that.

I remember Bob having a pet squirrel named Rocky who had malocclusion so his teeth had to be trimmed regularly. It was neat to think that he didn't just kill every animal. He had some deer heads in his shop, but also a human skeleton mounted up on the wall with some arrows because he lived on or near Native American grounds. He had one room full of trophies and another with rafters full of antlers. At some point he gave me some chocolate from his shop fridge and that sealed it; taxidermists are super cool and not all creepy weird people!

I am absolutely loving all these stories!

Lindsay, you actually sparked a memory!

In grade school I had a friend named Allison. She lived in a pretty wooded and secluded area around the Navesink River where a lot of Navtive Americans (Lenelanape) used to camp/travel through. Her Mom told us that she thought the place was haunted by Native Americans. This actually got Allison and I SUPER interested in pretending to be Archeologists and her Mom enduldged us by letting us section out an area in her backyard to dig for fun.

One hot day we were out digging and playing and at this point we had gotten pretty deep into the groubnd for two tiny 8 year olds. As I was digging I hit something. I carved it carefully out of the ground and it actually turned out to be pieces of an old "pot". Allison started hitting hard objects as well. She must have dug out about 3 perfectly preserved arrowheads and 2 broken ones before we started dancing around like idiots in our excitement.

We immediately brought our findings inside to her Mom who in turn sent them in to the local Native American museum. They actually dug up the rest of her yard that summer and found an old Lenelanape burial ground!

It was pretty exciting stuff for two kids who were just pretending at first!